There have already been many great films so far this year, so I felt it worth doing a run down of my favourite films of the year so far. These all reflect the cinema releases we’ve had so far in the UK in 2017 - for that reason this list includes some films that were released in the US in 2016. Enjoy, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on the best films of the year so far!
Honourable mentions: Their Finest, Colossal, Gifted
1.Get Out, dir. Jordan Peele
This film really knocked me for six, to such an extent that I simply had to see it twice in the cinema. It got even better upon a re-watch, when I was able to watch it with full knowledge of the characters’ underlying motives and the things to come. It’s a terrifying concept (the racism of an all-white suburb is taken to a horrifying extreme) executed with incredible panache, and you feel every emotion that Chris goes through thanks to Daniel Kaluuya’s excellent performance. Get Out also represents one of the most brilliantly communal experiences I’ve ever had at the cinema - I won’t spoil it, but let’s just say that the audience erupted into spontaneous applause at a key moment in the climax. Simply fantastic.
2.The Handmaiden, dir. Park Chan-wook
This film is exquisite - it’s first and foremost a beautiful boundary-smashing love story, and an absolutely marvellous tale of female defiance. It transplants Sarah Waters’ novel Fingersmith to 1930s Korea, and the story is effortlessly adapted to become intrinsically interwoven with its new setting. Sookee is a talented pickpocket plucked from a thieves den and sent as a handmaiden to trick a rich heiress into falling for a conman. To say any more would spoil the twists, but this film is just a masterwork of suspense, keeping you guessing throughout a series of interlocking pieces that take their time to reveal their secrets. I’ve seen the theatrical cut and the extended version, and they’re both great - you’re in for a treat with either.
3.Jackie, dir. Pablo Larrain
This is a film that soars on the strength of Natalie Portman’s incredible performance, which is complemented by Mica Levi’s haunting score. Portman’s performance is painfully vivid, with her agony and wretchedness coming through so intensely that it’s often uncomfortable to watch. Jackieis probably the best portrait of grief I’ve ever seen, and it sucks you into a famous historic event by providing an incredibly intimate perspective on it. This is great cinema, but be prepared for suffering.
4.A Cure for Wellness, dir. Gore Verbinski
This is a delightfully strange Gothic fairy tale of a film, and I’m amazed and impressed that a Hollywood studio gave Gore Verbinski a budget sufficient to pull it off with such beauty and style. I’ve seen this film attract love and hate in equal measure, but I adore it - the trailers set you up for a rehash of Shutter Island, but nothing could be further from the truth beyond the isolated setting. If I had to compare this to anything, I would compare it to Roger Corman’s Poe cycle of films from the 1960s - it has a similarly lurid sensibility and a deep-seated sense of fantastic romanticism at its core. Great if you’re after something uncompromisingly bonkers.
5.Wonder Woman, dir. Patty Jenkins
This film represented pure joy for me - I couldn’t have anticipated how emotional I was going to get at witnessing a (wonder!)woman crossing No Man’s Land and deflecting bullets with her bracelets. This simultaneously rejects the wry self-awareness of the Marvel films and the grim self-importance of the previous DC movies, instead unabashedly depicting a superhero who triumphs thanks to her overriding belief in love and compassion. Patty Jenkins adds endless little touches - from funny moments to quiet scenes where characters talk simply to learn about each other - that enrich the film and make it feel vivid and intimate in a very rare and special way.
6.Silence, dir. Martin Scorsese
This is truly the work of a master filmmaker, and it represents a stunning artistic achievement and a moving and intelligent investigation of the threshold of faith. Scorsese tried to get this made for decades before finally succeeding, and his passion for and belief in the project shine through in every painstakingly crafted frame.Silence is equal parts beauty and brutality, and it uses this contrast to illuminate the painful questions that the faithful must ask themselves when faced with the harsh reality of the present world. It’s heavy stuff, but well worth your time if you’re up for a film that raises more questions than it answers.
7.In This Corner of the World, dir. Sunao Katabuchi
I had no idea this film existed until a few days before I saw it, but I was really struck by its poetic treatment of the joys and tragedies of life. This film follows a young bride who moves to live with her husband’s family in WWII-era Japan, and while it deals unflinchingly with the trauma and horror of war - particularly the bombing of Hiroshima - it’s also surprisingly funny and ultimately hopeful. The power of this film comes through in the little moments of human connection and the way that the full potential of animation is exploited to maximum effect.
8.La La Land, dir. Damien Chazelle
A lovely ode to the classic Hollywood musical, La La Land is a technical marvel that sticks with me because of its heart and humanity (those words are recurring a lot, right?). It tells a very small story of a love affair between two dreamers in Hollywood, but it feels much bigger than them because of the way in which their story is told. La La Land draws from influences across the spectrum of cinema, and its homages to the classics are joyful and loving. The final ‘what might have been’ sequence represents the perfect marriage of raw emotion and filmmaking virtuosity.
9.Okja, dir. Bong Joon-ho
Not many films can balance flatulence jokes with uncompromising critique of capitalist greed, but Okjapulls it off with aplomb. The core story hinges on the innocent and endearing friendship between a young girl named Mija and a bio-engineered super pig called Okja, and the film succeeds because you totally buy their connection and desperately want the two of them to have their wish and live together in the mountains. I’m delighted that Netflix gave Bong Joon-ho a platform to make such a weird beast.
10.Logan, dir. James Mangold
Loganmay be bleak, but that isn’t what makes it great - Logan is fantastic cinema because it remembers that superheroes are still people who struggle with their own souls as much as super-villains. This film features the best character work managed in any of the X-Men films, and Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart and - in particular - Dafne Keen give heart-rending performances that really ground the film and give it an emotional core. I hope we get more superhero films like this, and that the takeaway from it for the industry is the importance of stressing character rather than frantic spectacle.
Most anticipated films still to come: War for the Planet of the Apes, Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets, Dunkirk, The Beguiled, Mother!, Logan Lucky, Blade Runner 2049, Murder on the Orient Express, The Shape of Water, Annihilation, Star Wars: The Last Jedi
This is my best of the year list so far! Enjoy, and feel free to chip in with your picks!
I picked out some of my favourite books, comics/graphic novels and films from 2018 for my annual Best of the Year selection over on my blog http://www.woolamaloo.org.uk/?p=6377
“In the films of her husband and ongoing collaborator Jia Zhangke, Zhao Tao has burrowed into each of her central roles with the prowess of a performer willing to discard any and all traces of herself in the name of her characters. She is that phenomenal being: an actor entirely without vanity. Her performances exist where Jia’s work exists—at the intersection of life and art, a place where the differences between reality and fiction cease to matter. In Ash Is Purest White, Zhao applies her extraordinary, unselfish talent to the transmogrifying arc of Qiao, a gangster’s moll forced to build her life anew after making the ultimate sacrifice for her inamorato. As she did in her previous film with Jia, Mountains May Depart, the actress ages decades across this personal epic, relying not so much on conspicuous cosmetic transformation or surface-bound tics to signal maturation but her unadorned face, which can express anything and everything; here, it manages to contain and communicate a lifetime of anguish and lasting passion. By stripping her style down to the wordless, elemental basics of screen acting, Zhao makes certain that the clarity of Qiao’s emotions and her durable connection to the audience are never diminished. In doing so, she continues to occupy her rightful place as the heart—and breath—of Jia’s lifelike cinema.” — Matthew Eng
“There is a unique and heartening thrill in watching an actor often shunted to the sidelines of films and TV shows finally obtain the spotlight she has been denied throughout her career. Such is the sensation of watching Mary Kay Place in Kent Jones’ Diane, a portrait of a worn out Massachusetts woman whose enduring sense of charity mirrors Place’s characteristic generosity as a performer who has tirelessly aided her fellow actors in countless projects, on the big screen and small, for over 40 years. Place’s Diane is the unwavering focus of the drama that bears her name, an emotional and psychological pilgrimage through the final winters of an aging, self-punishing caregiver prone to attending to everyone’s needs but her own. There is little flash to Place’s performance, which is consonant with Diane’s shrinking persona, the determined, tight-lipped, head-down reticence that only collapses when in the presence of her adult son (Jake Lacy), a hopeless addict whose irresponsibility enrages Diane to no end. Even when Diane reaches the end of her rope in these squabbles or in another quick-tempered quarrel with an insensitive volunteer at her local soup kitchen, Place never implores the audience for easy, uncomplicated sympathy; instead, she earns our rapt consideration by standing steadfast in the honesty of her minimalism, a mark of both her professionalism and her artistry. The actress is assured enough in her ability to touch upon a vast reserve of life experience to illuminate Diane’s inward struggle. She doesn’t strain for the teary, self-serving catharsis that would diminish the quiet desperation of the character’s circumstances, which Place seems to feel from the inside and exquisitely personifies with endless variations on exhaustion, agitation, and insuperable soul-sickness. By staying true to Diane, Place ensures that we are with the character every step of the way and gives depth to the type of woman who may move unknown through our daily lives but is far from unknowable.
Jones’ film makes room for plenty of splendid, underused veterans in addition to Place, among them Andrea Martin, Estelle Parsons, Phyllis Somerville, and, best of all, Deirdre O’Connell, a superb actor of stage and screen who usually resides even further on the margins of her projects than Place does in hers. O’Connell, a ringer who has been called upon many times to complement thankless parts, absolutely nails her small but significant role as Donna, Diane’s dying cousin, who has forgiven but not forgotten a betrayal in their shared past and refuses to flatter Diane in her final days. Delivering her entire performance from a hospital sickbed, O’Connell conveys tough wisdom with an authoritative whisper and the uncanny ease of someone made acutely aware that time is no longer on her side. When the character slips away, O’Connell’s powerful, straight-talking integrity, a force that supersedes her mortal frailty, weighs heavily over the film that follows, a phantom presence impossible to leave behind. In just a few scenes, the actress imparts the unmistakable and unfading impression of a life actually lived and lost.” —Matthew Eng
Best of the Year: Continuing today’s theme, THE MISCALCULATIONS OF LIGHTNING GIRL by Stacy McAnulty is Darlene’s middle grade pick and ORPHAN MONSTER SPY by Matt Killeen is her top YA!
